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by StarscreamII
Summary: John returns to Eridanus-II after all the dust has settled to make peace with his past. It's more difficult than he thought, but thankfully, his voice of reason is there to help him. Set quite a bit after Halo 4 (and any subsequent games). Human!Cortana.


**A/N**: Here's a little something to keep you all occupied until I can post the next chapter of **Unconventional** and the full first chapter of **A Necessary Evil**. I'm back in school with a lot of work-intensive science classes, so updates may be few and far between. Then again, if you follow me...then that's nothing new. Ahem.

I've had this mostly finished for a while now, but decided that instead of trying to force it to my self-imposed one-shot maximum of at least four pages, I'd finish it up and leave it like this. Short and sweet. Halo one-shots seem to be a really easy thing for me to do. I like it.

If you really want to get into the mood of the scene, listen to "Elegy" by Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy while you read. It's a beautiful song.

Many thanks to the following people who either reviewed or favorited _Broken Machine_: **Farky-Fark and the Munky Bunch** (my wonderful sister), **CJ-T-Bone, Marr Mo, spark 'n Jetz, CladnPlaid, **and **Marcus Nightshade. **Thanks for all the support, guys!

As always, **read, enjoy, review, and share!**

**Disclaimer: Halo belongs to Bungie, Microsoft, and 343 Industries, not me. Although I would love to have a Spartan and an AI to hang out with.**

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><p>The rain fell softly, soaking through the Spartan's shirt, not that he seemed to care—or even notice. Cortana stood in a nearby doorway, silent, watching him. For all the time she'd spent hardwired into his neural net—sensing his thoughts and unspoken feelings—she'd never felt like she was intruding. Not like she did now.<p>

Every step was reverent, gentle, taken with that uncanny grace that a seven-foot killing machine just shouldn't have had. Glass crunched under his boots, worn down by decades of being exposed to the elements, uncovering what had once lain underneath. A broken datapad. Pieces of a chair. A picture frame, still mostly intact, although holding a photo too burned to be worth keeping.

He leaned down and brushed away a handful of small shards, picking something up. Cortana couldn't see what it was from where she was standing, but it glinted briefly in his hand. He stared at it for a long moment before slipping it into his pocket and resuming his...she didn't quite know what to call it. ...his pilgrimage, almost. Not that this place held any significance that he _remembered_. He had been so young.

He drifted from room to room, absently trailing his fingers along half-standing walls and splintering support beams. A few rooms away, he crouched down, picking up what looked like another picture frame. This one must have been in better shape. As he looked at it, he slowly knelt, sitting back on his heels. He stayed that way for minutes, head bowed, silent, unmoving, holding the frame. Rain trickled down his face, dripping off his eyelashes and the end of his nose.

Cortana wanted to join him, but she couldn't. He needed his space. He had to do this on his own. She had to remind herself that he was strong enough to handle whatever emotions this would inevitably dredge up. And if she was wrong and he wasn't...well, that's what she was there for. But she had to at least give him the chance to try and work it out by himself. So she just watched him. Her eyes traced the contours of his spine and stoic profile as he remained kneeling there amidst the glass and charred beams. The scene was...oddly beautiful, in a melancholic way.

After a few more minutes, he stirred, standing slowly, still clutching the frame. He stared out at the ruined city around him for a few seconds, then continued walking, even more gingerly than before, if that was possible.

Cortana took a breath and swallowed before turning away to leave him alone for a while. The brittle glass crumbled away under her shoes and she tried not to look at the things she uncovered. This was sacred ground. She shouldn't have been stepping on memories. It wasn't right.

"Where are you going?"

She stopped walking, but didn't turn around. "I wanted to give you some privacy."

"I don't need it."

She bit her lip. "This is _your_ history, John."

He was silent for a while. "I hardly remember them," he eventually murmured, deep voice surprisingly soft. "Is that wrong?"

Oh God, here he went. He _did _need her for this. Cortana's heart fluttered in a strange ambivalence, caught between breaking and swelling. "You were young." She still couldn't bring herself to turn around and look at him, on the off-chance that he would still be holding that picture frame. She didn't have to guess at who was in the photo.

"I feel like a traitor."

She could hear the frown in his voice. No doubt, if she turned around right now, he would have his brows drawn together, lips pursed, with a distant sort of confusion in his dark eyes. She'd privately dubbed that expression "boyish innocence." The sad part was that, in some ways, he still was that six-year-old boy flipping an old coin on a playground.

"You're not. You had no... it was out of your control."

"But I barely remember them, Cortana. It's not much to ask, and I can't even do that one simple thing."

She shut her eyes, fighting back the tears that would inevitably fall if she turned around. She didn't know how to explain it. She'd always been able to help, always knew what to say. Now she was at a loss. A flash of anger lanced through her gut. Anger at Halsey for taking the children from their families. The families that, in some cases—in John's case—would be impossible to go back to.

But as she looked around at the ruined, charred, ashen skeletons of homes and businesses and schools and _lives_...the anger ebbed away. It wasn't Halsey's fault. Even she felt guilty about what she'd done. But she'd done it anyway. For something bigger than herself. For the good of the people. The survival of the human species. Not that she knew it at the time, but as the threat turned from insurrectionists to the Covenant to The Flood to the Didact…the Spartans had _always_ been the answer.

Maybe it was the wrong thing for the right reasons. The lesser of all evils. The only way for things to work out in their favor. And standing here, thinking about the scope of everything that had happened...it felt almost like destiny.

"You were meant to do this, John," she started quietly. "You were born for this life. And your parents? They sacrificed themselves for your cause, even if they didn't know it. You may not remember them as they were, but try to remember them as heroes, at least." She smiled to herself. "I guess it runs in the family."

He was silent for a long moment. "They would have liked you, I think."

"I'm sure I would have liked them, too."


End file.
